by Jim the Realtor | Apr 19, 2011 | Foreclosures/REOs, Ideas/Solutions, Thinking of Buying? |
From HW:
A bill introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives would waive early distribution penalties on certain qualified retirement plans if the funds are used to buy a house that has been in foreclosure for a year or more.
Bill Posey (R-Fla.) introduced H.R. 1526 — the Housing Recovery Act of 2011. It has been referred to the Committee on Ways and Means.
“It’s not an end-all fix,” Press Secretary George Cecala said. “It’s just another idea to help the housing market.”
The idea is to add stability to neighborhoods by promoting purchases by owner-occupants or those seeking a second home rather than investors who immediately “flip” the home. Under the bill, the purchaser must agree to hold the property for at least two years to be exempt from early retirement plan distribution penalties.
The bill is expected to apply to distributions from Roth IRAs, 401(k) plans and company pension plans. It would require the person to use the retirement distribution within 120 days of receipt by buying a home that “has been in foreclosure for a year or more.”
Cecala said Posey, a Realtor, anticipates that the one-year period would begin at the point that the foreclosed property is listed for sale, but said the congressman is open to amending the bill to be more specific about when the clock would start ticking.
Several states have extremely drawn-out foreclosure processes. Foreclosures in judicial state average about 13 months from start to finish. But once foreclosures are repossessed by the lender and enter what is known as real estate-owned status, or REO, it is not uncommon for them to be snapped up once listed for sale.
In Posey’s home state, his district covers Florida’s “Space Coast” not far from Orlando area. He is owner and founder of Posey Realtors & Co. in Rockledge, near Cape Canaveral.
by Jim the Realtor | Mar 18, 2011 | Ideas/Solutions |
The San Diego MLS is run by Sandicor, who refuses to create a powerful website to help educate consumers and support the agents. In Houston the association of realtors is doing a great job – they help the agents create their own promotional video and then keeps them together on the HAR website. They have their own HAR TV, they promote the members’ blog, and they also have an agent rating system where the clients leave feedback about their experience with the individual realtors. The agent rating system would be an invaluable tool just to keep agents honest – but Sandicor does nothing. Now others are raising the bar – it doesn’t matter how effective this idea is, just trying to create some extra value gets the consumer’s attention:
From the Redfin blog:
Whoa! Redfin just launched a big new upgrade on our website, showing customers our agents’ comments about the listings we’ve toured. We call these notes Agent Insights:
The big upgrade also shares private comments about each listing with the listing agent: the tool we use to schedule and track tours prompts our agents to say whether the lawn needs to be mowed or if the place showed well. Then we automatically send an email to the listing agent.
Features for both home-buying customers and listing agents are important, as we’re trying to strike a balance between our obligations as members of the real estate profession and our mission to change the game in customers’ favor.
13,793 Agent Insights, 31% of Seattle Homes Toured
What makes this upgrade a real game-changer for customers is the sheer number of homes we tour. Agent Insights isn’t an empty social network that we are hoping will one day come alive, or one patrolled by trolls and spammers.
On the day of launch, we already have 13,793 Agent Insights about homes currently for sale, each one from a licensed Redfin agent, each double-checked to make sure it is factual and intelligible to customers.
(more…)
by Jim the Realtor | Jan 2, 2011 | Ideas/Solutions, Market Conditions |
Copied from Paul Kedrosky’s Infectious Greed (here).
Click on “menu” in bottom left corner, and select “view fullscreen”:
by Jim the Realtor | Mar 3, 2010 | Ideas/Solutions |
It is customary for bubbleinfo to stand down during tragic events, and yesterday afternoon was one of those, with the Chelsea King case.
While the story will be with our community forever, we should put some immediate attention on it.
We’ve been discussing how we can’t depend on the government to provide as much as before, though many will say that the sex-offender program has been woefully inadequate for years. Hopefully this case will bring more attention to the program’s failings.
What can we do as private citizens? We need to be more aware of our surroundings, and take action to protect and defend ourselves from harm.
It is a mandatory disclosure in the real estate industry to encourage clients to review the Megan’s Law website, where registered sex-offenders are listed by name and address: http://meganslaw.ca.gov/
As we’ve seen in Chelsea King’s case, the perpetrators can move around, but let’s note where they are registered today:
| Town or Area |
# of RSO |
Town or Area |
# of RSO |
| Del Mar |
0 |
RB |
16 |
| RSF |
0 |
Poway |
25 |
| Carmel Vly |
2 |
Carlsbad |
29 |
| Solana Bch |
6 |
San Marcos |
38 |
| La Jolla |
6 |
Vista |
113 |
| Scripps Rch |
6 |
Escondido |
139 |
| Encinitas |
8 |
Oceanside |
147 |
| RPQ |
10 |
What can you do? Here’s a link to an article and video that covers the basics of self-defense. Hopefully the community will also create a non-profit foundation or other entity to which we can contribute, to help further the cause.
Chelsea’s case has deep personal concerns for me, being a parent of two teenage daughters. But there is also another personal tie, going back to the 1950s. As some of you know, my grandfather (I’m his namesake) was District Attorney of Alameda County back in the day. He prosecuted a very similar case that was captured in a book, Shallow Grave in Trinity County, that gripped our family then, and shows that this has been a problem for a long time.
EDIT:
This is the perpetrator’s parents’ home in RB, photo taken from the UT:
A bill introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives would waive early distribution penalties on certain qualified retirement plans if the funds are used to buy a house that has been in foreclosure for a year or more.
